She wore her thick canvas barn coat, Watson gloves, and a fleece headband over her ears and under her blond hair.
The owner of the stables, Marsha Dibble, had left her an envelope pinned to the bulletin board inside the barn. In it was her paycheck for the hours worked in December, a "Happy New Year" card, and a Post-it note reminding Marybeth to add a nutritional supplement to the grain of one of the older mares. Because Marybeth's arrival meant they would soon get their evening feed, all of the horses had come into their barn stalls to watch her. Using a long hay-hook, she tugged two sixty-pound bales of grass hay from the stack and cut the binding wires. She divided the hay into "flakes"-about one-fifth of a bale per horse-while the horses showed their impatience by stomping their hooves and switching their tails.
It was while Marybeth mixed the granular supplement in a bucket with the grain that she noticed that several of the horses had turned their heads to look at something outside. Their ears were pricked up and alert. Then she heard the low rumble of a motor and the crunching of tires on snow. The engine was killed, and a moment later, a car door slammed shut.
Assuming it was Marsha, Marybeth slid back the barn door to say hello. Her greeting caught in her throat.
Jeannie Keeley stood ten feet away, looking hard at Marybeth through a rising halo of cigarette smoke and condensed breath. Behind Keeley was an old blue Dodge pickup. A man sat behind the wheel, looking straight ahead through the windshield toward the mountains.
"Do you know who I am?" Jeannie Keeley asked. Her Mississippi accent was grating and hard. Dew you know who Ah yam?
Keeley wore an oversized green quilted coat. Her small hands were thrust into her front jean pockets. She looked smaller and more frail than Marybeth remembered her from their brief introduction four years before at the obstetrician's office. At that time, both were pregnant. Keeley had six-year-old April with her in the office at the time.
"I know who you are," Marybeth said, trying to keep her voice from catching in her throat. Behind her in the stalls, one of the buckskins kicked at the front of her stall to get her attention. Marybeth ignored the horse, her attention on the small woman in front of her.
"I know who you are, too," Keeley said. Her cigarette tip danced up and down as she spoke. "I want my April back."
The words struck Marybeth like a blow. Until this moment she hadn't realized just how much she had hoped Jeannie Keeley's arrival back in town was benign, that perhaps she was just passing through and making some noise.
"We consider April our daughter now, Jeannie. We love her like our own." Marybeth swallowed. "Joe and I are in the process of adopting her."
Keeley snorted and rolled her eyes.
"That process don't mean shit 'til it's done. And it ain't done if the biological mother don't consent."
"She's happy now," Marybeth said, trying to talk to Jeannie mother-to-mother. "If you could see her…" Then she remembered the tracks in the snow and flushed with anger. "Or maybe you did see her. Jeannie, were you outside our house two nights ago? Were you looking into our windows?"
A hint of a smile tugged at Keeley's mouth, and she tipped her head back slightly.
"Your house? That musta' been somebody else." Ay-else.
Marybeth tried to keep her voice calm and measured, while what she wanted to do was scream and yell at Jeannie at the top of her lungs. In the back of her mind, Marybeth had been preparing for this fight ever since she heard that Jeannie Keeley was back. But she fought the urge to attack, choosing instead, and with difficulty, to try to appeal to Jeannie's emotions.
"Jeannie, you dropped April off at the bank with your house keys when you left town. I understand how painful losing your husband and your home must have been. But you made the choice to abandon your daughter. We didn't take her from you."
Keeley eyed Marybeth with naked contempt. "You don't understand nothin' at all. I fuckin' hate people who say they understand things about me they don't." Her eyes narrowed into slits. "There's nothing for you to understand, Miss Marybeth Pickett, except that I want my baby back. She needs to be with her real mama, the one who changed her diapers. She was a hard birth, lady. She got me to bleedin'. I like to bled to death to bring her into this world." Keeley's voice lowered: "I want my daughter… back… now."
Marybeth glared back. She felt her rage, and her frustration, building. This woman hated her. This stupid, trashy woman hated her.
"We love April," Marybeth said evenly. The words just hung there.
"That's mighty white of you," Keeley smirked. Tha's mahty waht uv you. "But it don't matter. She's not your child. She's my child." Chile.
Marybeth realized that Jeannie was trying to bait her, trying to get her to lose her cool and say or do something that would look bad if they ever ended up in court. Jeannie had even brought a witness with her.
Again, Marybeth forced back her rage, and spoke softly.
"Jeannie, I do understand what it's like to lose someone. I lost my baby four years ago. Did you know that? Remember when we met at the doctor's office when we were both pregnant? I lost that baby when a man shot me. He was the same man who killed your husband." Marybeth's eyes probed for a sense of connection or compassion, but neither was forthcoming. "After I got out of the hospital, we found out about April. We took her in as our own. She's part of our family now. She's got wonderful sisters who care for her. Joe and I care for her. Can't you see that…"
Marybeth needed to be careful here, and she tried to be. "Can't you see that April is happy, and has adjusted? That the greatest gift a mother can give is to make sure her child is loved and cared for?"
Jeannie Keeley took her eyes off Marybeth, and seemed to be searching the snow for something. Absently, she dug in her coat pocket for another cigarette and placed it in her mouth, unlit.
Marybeth noticed that the man driving the pickup had finally turned his head to look at her. He was severe-looking, older than Jeannie, with an unkempt growth of beard. He wore a dirty John Deere cap. His eyes were sunken and dark, his pupils hard dots.
A match flared, and Marybeth looked back to Keeley as she lit her cigarette. Was it possible she was reconsidering, that Marybeth had touched her?
Keeley let two streams of smoke curl out of her nose. "Fuck you, princess," she hissed. "I want my April back."
Marybeth clenched her teeth, and her eyes fluttered. She thought that in four steps she could be on this horrible woman, pummeling her head with the hay hook that hung within easy reach on an upside-down horseshoe inside the door.
It was as if the man behind the wheel could read her mind, and he quickly opened his door and walked around the front of the truck. He stopped and casually pulled open his coat so that Marybeth could see the faux-pearl grip of a heavy stainless-steel pistol stuck into his greasy jeans.
"We best go, honey," the man said to Jeannie Keeley.
Keeley snorted, her eyes locked in hatred on Marybeth. The man reached up and put his hand on Keeley's shoulder but she shook it off.
"We best go."
"Look at that bitch," Keeley said, her voice barely a whisper. "Look at her standin' there like some kind of goddamned princess. She loses her baby so she thinks she can just steal mine to make up for it."
That tore at Marybeth, but she stood still and firm. Four steps, she thought.
The man moved behind Keeley, and put his arms around her, squeezing her into him, his head close to her ear, "I said let's go. We'll get April back. The judge said we would."
Jeannie started to resist, but was obviously overpowered. She relaxed, and he released his grip. She never broke off her glare at Marybeth.
"What was that about a judge?" Marybeth asked, not able to stop a tremble in her voice.
Keeley smiled, shaking her head instead of speaking. "Never mind that," she said, and backed up past the man, never taking her eyes off of Marybeth until she bumped up against the door of the truck. "You just better be packing her stuff up so's she'll be ready when we come get her and take her home."